Contact
by Foxyinthecity
Summary: Somehow tonight, something broke in him. He was no longer content to stand on the sidelines. When Teyla showed up at his quarters tonight, he was restless, the guilt of taking human lives taking its toll on his conscience.


Title:** Contact**

Episodes: First Contact, Outsiders

Characters: John Sheppard and Teyla Emmagen

Summary: Somehow tonight, something broke in him. He was no longer content to stand on the sidelines. When Teyla showed up at his quarters tonight, he was restless, the guilt of taking human lives taking its toll on his conscience.

Story type: Vignette

Comments: I wrote this months ago and never gotten around to post it just like the new chapters for some of my fics. RL has been a wild ride as of late, but I'm going to try to update these fics in the coming days. I adore this ship. And the potential for stories are still there for me.

John Sheppard pulled Teyla Emmagen toward him; crushing her lips with his own. He was beyond caring at the moment, if he had stopped to think this wouldn't be happening. What have his unspoken words, his inaction in dealing with his feelings have gotten him for the woman who moments before stood just inside the close doors of his quarters, he thought? How many times have their lives been in peril? Too many times to count! The list of close calls is getting too long and way too close.

Lately, it's as if an avalanche of life and death situations have rolled down a mountain on a crash course toward them. Each time getting out of the path, of their oncoming demise, more treacherous, more complicated. Complicated because of the choices they have had to make in those situations and the lives of the people who were affected by those choices. Sleep didn't come easy for him most nights. On those rare nights he slept, exhaustion was his pill.

So be damn! He was willing to let the chips fall were they may tonight for this contact. Defenses cracked by exhaustion, the haze of sleep, the sleep he had just awoken from, the dreams of how close he had came to losing people that matter the most to him seem to always fill those sleeps. So the consequences will be dealt with later. For this moment, for this contact – he wanted nothing more than to hold this woman, no, not in one of those dreams. Watching her almost being beamed up into a dart earlier on the planet was one of the things driving his need tonight. He had lost her once before. And a secret he has kept from her. They were fortunate to have been able to rescue her – he knew her faith and the faith of the other people he cared about if they had not found her or his way back to his own time.

On that planet, he had to make hard choices. His decision that took the lives of Jarvis and his men wasn't easy one. Jarvis and his men were Collateral damage. Sometimes, doing what must be done does not stop the guilt, the recriminations. His need to find absolution with some of those decisions was found in the risks that he takes - his need to always put his life on the line first. No mission too dangerous.

Somehow tonight, something broke in him. He was no longer content to stand on the sidelines. When Teyla showed up at his quarters tonight, he was restless, the guilt of taking human lives taking its toll on his conscience.

Teyla has been his lighthouse from the moment of their introduction. She has been his beacon in the darkness of emotions, his voice of reason in the light of day, his stabilizer, his equalizer, his ultimate, his unattainable, and his ache.

Bodies molded together, lips touching, savagely, urgently. Loss in their needs, John lifted and gathered Teyla's tightly into his arms. Seconds pass. Lips parted, breathes gasping, green eyes and almond eyes clashing, under the florescent lights, penetrating…

The dam of their penned up feelings that they had placed around their feelings for one another now slowly cracking releasing guarded emotions.

"John, we can't! I can't…," as Teyla tried to put some distance between her and John.

Her Eyes and her body response betraying the plead she now uttered out loud. John wasn't willing to let her go tonight. Her response to his kiss had inflamed him, and impaled him on this course. Whatever doubts he may have had about her feelings for him, no longer applied because Teyla had kiss him back, passionately. So armed and spurred on with the knowledge he fought.

"I'm sorry." But he wasn't sorry.

John watched the play of differing emotions as they cross Teyla's face. Teyla was struggling to regain her composure. She was stunned by the force of the emotions she felt coming from John. Her emotions were ablaze. No longer were her emotions, that of a match striking the coated narrow strip for the very first time.

For months now, Teyla had been dealing with changes in her personal's life. It is not that she doesn't care for Kanaan, but whatever drew them together no longer applied. Having Kanaan's child was not what she had planned. Kanaan was familiar when she needed something familiar. When she needed to be held, he provided the warmth of an embrace. When she needed to feel wanted, he had provided that touch. How could she regret her son? Never!

Her son's father was another matter. It pained her to tell him that he could and will have a place in her son's life, but he couldn't in hers not the way he had hoped. Kanaan had seemed to understand. Remarking he hoped he knows what a very fortunate man he is to have the heart of Teyla Emmagen. Kanaan had sense and known of her feelings for John Sheppard.

"You know something? You know what today highlighted to me? It highlighted to me that I could lose you at any moment. That, that, one day I or we may not make it back from a mission."

The sound of John's voice talking to her pulling Teyla from her thoughts, Teyla looked at John warily.

"I, I, you know I'm no good when it come to talking about my feelings right? (Teyla nodded her agreement.) But, but, if we have to lose each other, I don't want it to be without me at least letting you know how I feel about you. I have too many regrets. I'm already haunted with some of the things I did in defense of Atlantis. The things I did for the needs of the many and today being no exception. My only defense is that I believe they were the right decisions when I made them. I realize, me not telling you how I feel (pausing) this can't be one of them!"

"And I can live with the fact that I may not make it back alive, but when it comes to you I can't." The admission was wrung from the deep within him.

As Teyla listened to John, she understood because she too struggle sometimes with some of their decisions. But it was John's difficulties in voicing his silent struggles, his guilt of what those decisions have taken their toll that broke her. She went to him, embracing him. John's arms swept down tighten around her. So unlike their other embraces, which were so awkward in nature, due to John's guarded barriers around his feelings and his need to protect him self.

Teyla could feel and hear the rapid beating of John's heart as her head rested on his chest, nestle between his folding arms; enveloping her. Rhythmicin tone were the heart beats. Pools of liquid grace the corner of Teyla's eyes. For this moment, a moment filled with happiness tapered with sadness, and lingering doubts. For Teyla, her feelings for John Sheppard haven't been easy to carry or to feel. There were times before she had thought John cared beyond them being friends only to be disappointed.

John wasn't sure what her embrace meant. He knew it meant something. He just wasn't sure what it meant. Teyla's silence in his arms brought back his old doubts and insecurities for a moment, expressing personal feelings, never came easy to him. As gone unnoticed to him, were the tears that were slowly escaping Teyla's eyes.

"Ah, Teyla. I…I don't expect…" John paused. To him these words never came easy. He was the one who started this contact, so he might as well see it through, tonight was about no regrets.

TBC

I would love to know what you guys think. Thanks.


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